


Golden Son

by Elizabeth_Marie_Jones



Series: The Ravens Bedtime Stories [5]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 19:17:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21202721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabeth_Marie_Jones/pseuds/Elizabeth_Marie_Jones
Summary: Everyone always forgets gold is the coldest metal.





	Golden Son

**Author's Note:**

> So Peter broke down my door and decided he wanted to talk. So here I guess.

Peter is not as oblivious as his dear siblings like to think. He just knows he doesn’t have the head for mind games and politics and faces like they do. He can’t tell you the fastest way to get back home or just who to talk to for smuggled chocolate. 

But he knows enough to be a distraction. Big and in your face and while not smooth there’s something about him that’s just charming. He takes advantage of it. 

Big and bright and attention grabbing so his dear siblings can play their games in the shadow he casts. 

Lucy takes after him that way. But where he plays sheepish and apologetically charming. She plays cute, innocent, irreverent. 

People always forget that he and Lucy are the dangerous ones. Because Edmund and Susan may ruin you and your livelihood but Peter’s got a mean cricket swing and Lucy’s a dab hand with those knives he slipped her. 

Edmund and Susan get tied up in their complicated games get used to looking 12 steps ahead that sometimes they miss the closest threat. The one that will pop up at the last second the opportunist who saw them walking home from church one morning and followed them home. The one he hit until their skin was swollen and Lucy carved up like a choice piece of dinner. 

He and Lucy don’t advertise how dangerous they are and sometimes Edmund and Susan forget. Edmund doesn’t like dragging them into his business so they take great pains to keep it separate but he always knows, and then he looks guilty for weeks. 

Peter doesn’t get it but he’s long since admitted that Edmund is actually the nicest of the Pensaeve kids. 

When Lucy comes running back saying she was gone for hours and looking it (she picks at the scab on her thumb whenever she’s alone. It had opened and healed over differently in the last 5 minutes). He believes her. He doesn’t say it aloud makes fun of it actually but he believes her. The weird look That crossed Edmunds face when she said it cemented it. 

He’s seen his own share of oddities around London. he just doesn’t care how they work. Not like Ed does. 

He does let Lu slink into his room later and give him the whole story. She said there was something off about it. That her friend had that guilty look that Ed and Su get when they're lying to them. The one no one else seems to recognize. She said the guilt had won out and he had rushed her back before whatever he’d been planning actually happened though. 

Peter just listened and told her to keep her knife on her. Lu doesn’t get carried away like he does and she’s so small she needs the added reach so he never feels bad about knicking then from the other boys to pass along if there’s any quality to them. 

When Lucy comes back saying that Ed was there too and Ed vehemently denies it and Susan follows Ed’s lead he does too. 

He had to win another knife off of the stable boy as an apology and spend another hour quietly explaining why he didn’t back her but once he did. She let it go. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, he always did but Ed had a look on his face that meant it was trouble. The look that he was weighing his options and calculating the odds and he had that guilty twitch In his pinkie that meant that he’d have to hurt them first somehow to get them to safety later. 

Ed and him played a game back on the streets of England of not being able to stand each other, of hatred, and a willingness to abandon and hurt at the drop of a dime. People always forgot that they went home to sleep in the same room. That Edmund always listened to Peter monologue about what he did that day and when Peter would turn to him and ask what he did in return... all Peter would get was silence while Ed put it all together. Peter would heavily sigh and then ask questions about interactions he didn’t understand...why Mary had blushed and do you think she likes me? And Edmunds response a sigh or a responding jab would tell him he’d managed to get it right or not. 

Ed uses insider information from his enemy’s own camp and Peter gets someone to explain the intricacies of human emotions to him. It works. 

When Aslan says Edmund betrayed them Peter uses the memories of the times that “his friends” of the week realized he sold them out to craft his own response. Denial and outrage and then he stays furious. Lucy plays along and Su well there’s something emotional he’s missing here that she’ll understand to relay to Ed. 

He plays the I’m the eldest he’s my responsibility card though when Lucy gives him that tear filled glance. The others including Su think he’s doing it for Lucy. But Lucy, dear little Lucy she realizes what he missed, she’ll explain it later. 

When Lucy tells him how personally Aslan took that betrayal. That there was something off about it. That Aslan reminds her of John before Su got him in hand. He stiffens. 

Su’s off wondering the camps and he and Lu are in their tent alone they charmed the guards to following Su so they can speak privately. 

John was a bad situation. It could have ended terribly Peter had been all but prepared to murder him outright and deal with the consequences but Su got there first. 

Lucy puts a hand on his shoulder and holds him down. She’s surprisingly strong for her size. It makes him stop and think. Ed left us not the other way around. Which means, he’s doing something stupidly dangerous that will pay off in the end. That Aslan is the better of the two choices. That Edmund doesn’t believe that Aslan will be able to act against them. That he’s backed into a corner like dear old John. 

It means that they’ve already won this war. That no one else realizes it yet. Peter trusts his brother to do all the necessary backstabbing and backstabbing necessary to come back to them.


End file.
